Doctor Gast

1yr of May at 6.8 + Rushing 36.3= 43.1 Duran 24.7 + Castro 8.9 = 33.6 Sorry TopGun Castros value has dropped a lot at BTV since all the trade talk. But Rushing is a great target.

Some teams with only an inkling that Sasaki would make that jump, were quick to reach out to Sasaki. That makes a difference to see the teams that had interest in him, to let him know he's wanted. MN has a lot to offer Sasaki. This isn't a Sasaki sweepstake, it's a beauty contest with teams to see which team will be the most attractive to Sasaki. It's Falvey job to convey to Sasaki that we really want him & highlight to him all the good qualities of the Twins & how we can make him into the best SP of all time & a good person at the same time. Chpetit19 has a heartbeat for where Falvey is at, it seems that we shouldn't get our hopes too high. But I'll still hope against hope.

Many teams & some are very competitive teams have done basically nothing in FA. PHI major addition is Kepler paying him what we paid for him last offseason. ATL only signed a couple of minor split contracts, CLE has been praised for signing Santana after trading away slugging 1Bman Josh Naylor to save about $2M. I'd take 1 yr. of Naylor over 1yr. of Santana any day. I may seem like a broken record. There seems like a ton of pressure to dip into FA, if you don't you're a loser. But smart teams that in our situation try to avoid FA. We should have built on the core we had from '23 last season but we didn't & the moves we made then made us weaker. We still have most of the core intact & I agree with you Gregg that it shouldn't be hard to make us into a competitive playoff team. Last offseason Twins focused on a lot of fringe RPs that never panned out. But when we needed a high-leverage LHRP they balked (we still need one). We also needed a viable SP, they got broken down 5th SP. To be a viable contender we need to be strong up the middle- SS good, CF very good, 2B better w/o Julien, catcher?. Catching is our weak point, If we dial back Jeffers to weak-side tandem, Vazquez as our bandage we can be slightly above average & serviceable. BUT what others are proposing of trading Vazquez thus thrusting Jeffers into primary catcher duty with poor backup will spell disaster much like '22. We absolutely need a future tandem of promising young MLB-ready catchers to be mentored so that in the future when we need to rip off the bandaid (Vazquez) they can step up & take over. I have a lot of trust in Keirsey to step up & be a very competent backup in CF & will surprise us with his offense. The Emma will be up before you know it. Miranda will finally get his chance to stay relatively healthy & mash at 1B. A quality RH platoon bat at 1B/RF would be nice but obtaining a bunch of fringe replacement players for 1B/ C & throwing them at the wall to see if any stick isn't a very good strategy. This offseason can be simple if they don't be creative with the core, stay out of FA & fill needed holes via trade. But this wait & see approach makes it more difficult.

IMO Margot was more a mandate.

Thielbar is a magician, always pulling a rabbit out of the hat when there seemed nothing there. I was hoping him able to do it one more time as a Twin. But I guess it didn't fit into the wait-and-see cards. But as a Minnesotan at heart, I'm very proud of him & wish him the very best. Thank you Caleb for many memorable performances, you'll be missed.

Not everybody in baseball has their heart in it. Ask Rendon or Derek Bender. They may have talent to play, in analytics or in the business side of the game they may even like the game but not love it.

I believe Tingler's main job is to pre-analyze possible future situations so they can promptly have the analytical solution if & when they occur.

As far as being a lame duck, it isn't really pertinent when it comes to baseball. Players in the last year of their contract don't just float through, they try their best so they can resign or sign for a better contract. If Baldelli really loves baseball, which I think a prerequisite for a manager should be, he'll do his best to get resigned or make it easier to find the next job.

I like Falvey & really like Baldelli. Falvey was signed to develop a pitching pipeline, he has slowly but surely done so. But IMO he is almost in everything else incompetent yet he wants to control everything. So he has put yes men in key positions- Zoll, Baldelli, Tinglers, Conger & Watkins. Analytics is very important but it's not the end all. Analytics, w/o the right philosophy or fundamentals, is useless also IMO there has to be a balance & MLB experience & feel for the game are more important. We are imbalanced where weird analysis rules & we need to clean house, that means Tinglers, Conger & Watkins are gone. Falvey's duties are limited to the business & pitching departments., Keep Zoll where he was & get a GM who is able to initiate & close essential trades, IMO that is the most important duty of a GM the rest can be delegated. I said all that to emphasize that Baldelli was put in a position to fail. Baldelli has the potential to become a very good manager. In '19, it'd have been more beneficial to have kept Molitor, let him run the show & put Baldelli as bench manager to help Molitor with the analytics & at the same time glean from Molitor's baseball knowledge. Baldelli's early success came from balanced bench coaches Derek Sheldon & Mike Bell's guidance. Tingler was the extreme opposite. IMO the best solution is to demote Baldelli to bench coach & let him learn to be a manager the right way. But for that to happen, there needs to be changes.

Good, I don't think I could handle any more of their creativity.

I'd rank Raya higher & think he has a good chance to become a MLB opener this season.

A belated Happy Birthday & a Happy New Year, friend.

When I saw trading Duran, My 1st thought was h**k no. Then I thought maybe Dalton Rushing. Established closer for a promising, blocked-catching prospect, that's reasonable. But unproven Feduccia & Casperius for Duran, is a gigantic underpay. I know very little about Feducci. I looked in LAD top 30 prospects in '22.'23.'24 & I couldn't find him anywhere to get some kind of scouting report. Very strange that he didn't make the top 30 in those 3years. Looking at his AAA stats his CS% were low. I have no idea where his ceiling is at. Yet because LAD deems him as MLB-ready & a LH hitter, he'd be my 3rd catcher if he were to become a Twin. Jeffers isn't able to take control of the lion's share of the duties so somehow Feducci, Gasper & Camargo would have to take up the slack when they had very little MLB experience between them if they decide to move Vazquez. That would be very concerning. IMO it's like last year acquiring all those fringe RPs that never panned out. Instead of getting all those fringe RPs why not get one really good one. Casperius & Feducci would be good depth pieces but no way comes close to Duran. Just for comparison BTV, Duran is at (24.7) surplus trade value- Casperius & Feducci combined is at (3.8). Both of these guys are blocked. For the sake of these players & those behind them like Dalton Rushing, could LAD be interested in a Paddack (3.7) trade?

Happy New Year! You forgot creative.

Wish him well with Cubs. I was selfishly hoping for a comeback with the Twins,

Very funny, I was amused & I thank for that. If you actually read my posts you'll know that my point isn't getting rid of Jeffers, it's upgrading from Jeffers. Gasper isn't even a viable 3rd string catcher. Jeffers is the best backup catcher we've ever had. If we had an elite starting catcher in-house right now MLB-ready & Jeffers locked up cheap for years as a weak-side tandem. You'd never see me hint about trading him. But what I'm trying to break is the *delusion that Jeffers is our primary catcher savior that'll be worthy of the megabucks extension that Boras will get for him because the Twins have no viable plan B,C or D. Reality is this, Jeffers isn't a primary catcher, he cannot catch consecutive games over a long extended amount of time w/o crashing & burning. He can't handle even an equal tandem without waning especially defensively in the 2nd half. Don't take my word for it check it out. '20 (backup) to Garver= very good year. '21 Garver down, Jeffer (caught a slight majority of games) with Rortvedt rounding out= Slump. '22 (primary catcher)= crashed & burned. '23 Vazquez signed, Jeffers (weak-side tandem)= a very good year. '24 (equal tandem)= started out very good but waned in the 2nd half. Our only hope is to go reasonably swap a proven MLB catcher to a competing team that needs one, for a young promising MLB-ready starting catcher. We can't give Vazquez away so how are we headline him in a trade? Jeffers still has good trade value for this season yet this is the best time (last year would have been much better) to trade him, the longer we wait the less we'll get for him. Personally, I'd rather have Vazquez mentoring our future catchers than Jeffers. *This delusion will be our demise if we don't wake up soon.

IMO at DH OPS is important, it should be around .850, defense is not. 1B & RF also important should be around, .800. LF & 3B w/ a solid glove around .750. 2B solid glove with good range .700 is fine. CF & SS great glove & range is priority, .650 or less. Catcher priority is all the aspects of defense tangibles & nontangibles, OPS ,600 or less is fine. If the catcher is average ish or less OPS becomes a bigger deal. DH- OPS is priority & as you go down the order OPS become less important & defense becomes more important to catcher where defense is priority. With no switching of priority.

Agree with you Fatbat, Paddack's salary isn't outrageous for what he's worth. However, he could be easily replaced by a cheaper SP if as many are led to believe that they have to cut budget. They are just waiting around for another FO to offer them a reasonable offer, to help them out. That should have happened by now. If he's our easiest trade piece to move & they can't move him then what is going on their heads? That's what scares me. If the Pohlads are willing to suck up the extra $12M & Twins sign no FAs, I'm fine with that, Yet making trades don't cost you monetarily which they should be made to make us better.

Looking at Vazquez, the balance of what we'll need to eat & what we'll end up saving & what we'd pay for McCann is practically zero. Looking at Fangraph Vazquez is projected at 1.3 WAR over 0.5 for McCann. IMO dWAR doesn't do justice to Vazquez defensively. Vazquez has settled in the Twins' pitching system where he can focus more on his hitting, so hitting is less of an issue but the big difference is all the aspects of Vazquez's defense that make him much more desirable. Zero savings, much less desirable catching situation does not solve the current or future catching problem. It's a hard pass. Jeffers isn't a primary catcher, he has only 1 more year left after this year it'll be difficult to trade for anything after this year. To extend him, Boras will want top-catching dollars for a backup catcher, that'll create another black hole if FO chooses to extend him. Trade Jeffers for a promising young starting MLB-ready catcher & find another via trade to help out (Gasper & Camargo won't cut it) with actual savings of $4.7M. Then IMO Vazquez has more interest in years than money & would prefer to stay put. So we could renegotiate his contract for a 2 yr., $6M/ yr. starting this year, a $4M savings. A total of $8.7M in savings & solving our future catching problem by trading Jeffers compared to trading Vazquez with zero savings, doesn't solve the future catching problem & inferior catching core.

I don't think you were born yesterday, Mr Schmoeman, So why pretend? Where the talk begins, is on social media. Agents & FOs leak talking points to social media long before or ever make a formal announcement. In this case, it's more about preparing the fanbase for future intentions that might or might not happen. In most cases if it's a bad idea they'll do it & if it's a good idea they won't. They'll end up doing what they want. There is no talk about Keirsey, Helman or Eels making the active roster when the team breaks camp over 2 months prior, although they are deserving (IMO Keirsey should be a lock). This has Falvey smell all over this, trying to drum up validity where there is none over something he has done. I don't know if Nick got this idea indirectly or directly from Falvey or from a different social media source. But this definitely smells Falvey.

Thank you for your sharing.

That's what I'm afraid of. This talk of the opening-day roster makes me wonder.

Last season hitting was plagued by the league getting the book on our "all or nothing" approach, injuries, inexperience & exhaustion. Larnach was 1st on adjusting, then Wallner who can still improve his SOs & Julien has bottomed out & yet to adjust. So I see Larnach the same, Wallner improves & Julien can't get any worse. Miranda, Correa & Buxton were injury-related. Miranda, I expect a big comeback at 1B. With a healthier '25 I don't expect large regression from either. Now exhaustion, Lewis, he has stated that he's doing a better conditioning program this offseason. So I expect him to only get better. Castro was run ragged subbing at premium positions over an extended amount of time. I expect Correa's problem is corrected & Keirsey subbing Buxton will greatly releave this problem. Jeffers, it depends on if he's dialed back a little he'll get better if put in the primary catcher all season he'll crash. Keirsey was shamefully left off as the Twins' primary CF backup. Keirsey, Martin & Helman, I expect to have better seasons. So I expect a much better offensive season this year over last season. Barring any bonehead moves.

Yeah. Light-hitting Gasper doesn't really profiles at 1B but for Julien IMO to succeed in the MLB he'll have to reinvent himself which also means he might not profile as a 1Bman & that is IF he can adjust. They have about the same MLB 1B time but Gasper has much more MiLB experience. I just think that Julien is much more valuable to us as trade bait than being on the roster.

Fangraph has projected Gasper with 0 PAs at any position for the catching-deprived BOS. Even so I'd venture to say that he might be a better 3rd catcher than Camargo. I'd also venture to say he might be better than Julien at 1B & 2B. That shouldn't be praise for how good Gasper is but for how bad our depth is at those positions. But to say that he can make the active roster out of camp is a slap in the face to more promising in-house Keirsey, who was overlooked for almost all of '24 because of FO's out-house selection bias. Gasper is a far cry from who we really need to fulfill those needs. A Paddack/ teammate Romy Gonzalez with Gasper thrown in would have been a much more productive trade. If Gasper is the replacement for Vazquez we are in serious problems. I'll reiterate that dumping Vazquez is a big mistake. 1st to trade Vazquez I heard we'd have to eat 60% of his salary, that is only a $4M savings. 2nd Vazquez knows our pitching staff & how to handle them. He has a sense of the game, leadership quality & other intangibles. 3rd his hitting is trending upward. 4th Jeffers isn't a primary catcher no matter what the hype says, just look at the #s when he is backup & when he's the primary or even an equal tandem. Quickly we'll discover that we need a starting catcher but we have only $4M to spend on an expensive highly inferior catcher who doesn't know our pitchers. That leaves us with a very good backup catcher, a poor backup catcher who's a stranger & 2 questionable AAA catchers & saving us zero dollas. Not solving our present or future-catching problems. We have needed a future promising catcher for a long time.